I shake my head, kiss away her disappointed moan as I grip her thighs to me.
‘But you said...?’
‘I know what I said, but I was a fool. I trust you...if you trust me.’
‘Of course.’ She holds my face in her hands, stares into my eyes. ‘Always.’
It’s music to my desperate heart.
I can’t believe I’ve kept my distance for so long. Feared the risk when the payoff is so great, so perfect. It’s her, and she’s everything. If she’ll have me...lay down roots and commit.
Not that I’ll say it aloud. Because even through the lustful haze I know she isn’t ready to hear it. Not yet.
And so I stay quiet. Tell her with every sweep of my lips, my tongue, my fingers how I feel, what I want and what I dream of for the future.
I know there’s a clock ticking away somewhere. Her clock. The time she lives by.
But I’m done with dancing to its tune. I’m done with resisting this.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she says into the darkness some time later.
We’re both spent and stuffed. Dinner in bed was her best idea yet, and once James got over the blushes it was dished out and cleared away with minimal fuss.
I press a kiss to her hair, pull her in closer as I stare unseeing at the ceiling. ‘Anything.’
Because the truth is there’s nothing I would keep from her. I’d lay my heart bare right now if I thought it would keep her here rather than make her run.
‘Why me, do you think?’
‘Besides the fact that you epitomise your name and I could no longer resist your smile?’
‘Behave!’ She gives me a little shove. ‘I mean, why did Katherine choose me to inherit? Of all her foster children over the years, why me?’
‘You said you’d read her letter.’
‘I did, but...’ She gives a tiny shrug. ‘It’s so much—too much.’
‘She did it because she loved you.’
‘She loved us all, Edward.’
I take a steady breath, knowing how brutal it will sound, but knowing I must tell her all the same...
‘You were different, Summer. You didn’t have anyone else.’
She presses away from me, her frown of confusion making my chest ache. ‘Neither did the other children.’
I search her gaze. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to push her away. I’m cherishing the closeness we’ve found, but it’s so precious, so very new.
‘Edward...?’
I force myself to put it into words, my arm still around her, holding her close. ‘Gran fostered children who were hard to home, Summer. In a lot of cases she took siblings just so they could stay together and wouldn’t be separated. But you...you were much older, and you had no siblings, but you were...you were flagged.’
She swallows. ‘Flagged as being difficult?’
‘Yes.’
‘People didn’t want me?’